


Quilt

by ladyflowdi



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, Hypothermia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-05
Updated: 2008-12-05
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:04:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/ladyflowdi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wouldn’t have been so bad if Rodney had a blanket or two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quilt

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my LJ-to-AO3 project.

John had a routine for bedtime, ingrained by too many years in the service. Out in the field he could sleep standing up if he had to, could sleep in the cockpit of any given aircraft (built for utility rather than comfort, which seemed at odds with the primary objective of not crashing the twenty million dollar toy, but whatever), could sleep in the mud and rain, could sleep in a prison cell with three hours between himself and the random alien torture session. _Snap_ , and just like that John was out like a light.

At home, it was an entirely different story.

John’s pajamas were cotton pants and a t-shirt, but the pants had to be soft and worn, and the shirt had to be stretched out at the neck. John hated anything confining around his neck while he slept – in fact, he’d have slept naked if he wasn’t the commander of the military contingent, who was often woken up in the middle of the night for the dumbest shit imaginable. That had grown less frequent when Lorne became John’s 2IC, but that didn’t mean it didn’t still happen.

John usually slept with a pillow and a sheet at the most. Too many sweltering nights had ingrained in him the need to remain cool as often as possible – forget sweatshirts, he couldn’t even sleep wearing socks. In deep winter John would settle for a light blanket, maybe, if it got really cold. 

At least until he’d started fucking around with Rodney McKay.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if Rodney had a blanket or two. Maybe something soft but cool, something that _breathed_. But no. No, Rodney didn’t have any such blanket; Rodney had _quilts_ from _Canada_ , four of them, so thick and so heavy that it was like trying to sleep buried under mounds of taffy. John knew the reasons, knew it was a throwback to, oh, Rodney’s _entire life_ , and the deep, almost desperate need to be warm wasn’t something he could help. John got that, he really did, but he hated those blankets with the sick sort of irrational loathing he usually reserved for paperwork, bugs, and products that left his hair oily.

John hated them until they got stranded on a rock made entirely of ice, without a chance in hell of getting home. The sun had kept the worst bite of cold away and Rodney had worked on the DHD for seventeen hours straight, until his lips were blue and his fingers were numb. The sun went down and the planet experienced twenty nine straight hours of the kind of cold John had never felt, the kind that if you fell asleep you wouldn’t wake up, the kind that John had no defense against. The tent went up as fast as they could get it, as sturdy as shaking hands would allow, and nine people, including _Ronon_ , got into the four-man tent that wasn’t so much four-man as ‘two Marines built like brick shithouses’ or ‘four small people’ or a mixture of the two. John thought maybe it saved their lives, in the end.

They lost Perkins before they buddied up and zipped sleeping bags together. They lost Sgt. Fraser before they started talking to one another to keep each other awake. They lost Ramirez and Sutton through no fault of their own. John wished for Rodney’s blankets so hard that he had to bury his face in Rodney’s ice encrusted jacket shoulder so he wouldn’t lose it. 

Somewhere in the fourteenth hour Rodney started gasping for air, the long-dormant asthma he’d had as a kid making a surprise return visit. No amount of medication they had on hand helped. It was too cold and his lungs couldn’t take it, so John did the only thing he could think of, even if it was stupid and dangerous with the air already so thin -- he pushed Rodney deeper into the sleeping bag and zipped it up over their heads, leaving a little air pocket above John’s head. He heard everyone else doing it, too.

They were still like that when Caldwell beamed them directly to the infirmary. Then it was nothing but a haze of pain, hot blankets and hot saline bags packed into his armpits, his groin, and along his neck. He couldn’t get warm, not during the trip back to Atlantis, or three days under Carson’s care, or one aching hour in his painfully chilly bed.

He padded to Rodney’s room with his pillow, sweats and his extra pair of socks, and Rodney pulled him close at the same time that he threw the blankets over their heads, just like every night. And then it was nothing but Rodney, a tuft of hair and the pale shadow of his shoulder, eyes sunken and dark and sleepy, and Rodney's blankets, the soft, soft blue of spring skies shaking off winter.


End file.
